


All That Never Changes

by bigmamag



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:36:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigmamag/pseuds/bigmamag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Billy saw Joe's dead body laid out on the concrete, he laughed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That Never Changes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spuffyduds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/gifts).



> Beta by [mijmeraar](http://mijmeraar.livejournal.com).

When Billy saw Joe's dead body laid out on the concrete, he laughed.

"Fucking cunt," he yelled, still laughing. People were shaking their heads, covering their mouths in horror, and Billy was laughing his ass off. He kept laughing as he walked away, not listening to other people trying to call him back, just walking on down the street with no direction in mind. He didn't stop laughing until he was several blocks away. He stopped then and sat his ass down on the curb in front of some projects, the kind where they robbed you and the police didn't care. He lit up a cigarette, and then another, until the pack he had on him was gone.

Four hours went by, and no one bothered him. Made sense, because he still had on the shirt with blood on it and his nose hadn't stopped bleeding before he got the news. He looked like he'd been mugged already.

He didn't feel grief. He didn't know if it would come later, or maybe he'd been grieving a loss for years. He felt relief, but not the kind of relief that made him think of getting rid of a burden. It was a relief like having no answer to a problem, and then suddenly the problem never existed. The thing is, you'd spent most of your life finding a solution to that problem, picking it up, studying it from all angles, trying to get away from it, always coming back to it, and now the problem was gone and he was left here with no other purpose.

All it took was one bullet in a gun wielded by one giant dumb ass. Joe had always had more balls than Billy had.

  
*

  
Eventually he did get up, when the sun started to rise. He didn't go back. He went to an ATM and took out a shitload of money. Then he went to a bus station.

"Where to?" the elderly lady at the ticket window asked, leaning her head on one hand, bored as shit.

"Who-gives-a-fuck-land," he said, shoving a wad of bills under the glass. He didn't even look at the ticket, just got on the bus to go there.

He didn't sleep. Instead he played the 'Let's See How Many Things Remind Me of Joe Dick' game, which was better than I Spy any goddamn day.

Bus. Tour buses, he shouldn't even fucking have to name that one.

Sticker on a girl's backpack of a raven. The time they were in Toronto and they'd had to sleep in Queen's Park. Joe drank from a paper bag and went on one of his long spiels about how this was going to make an awesome story to tell their grandkids. Or tomorrow's hookers, whatever.

Coffee cup. Watching Joe down one at three in the morning, trying to stay awake, snow falling hard outside as they tried to get out of whatever city they'd performed at that night.

Toilet in cramped bus bathroom. Drunk and high, Joe cornered Billy in a motel bathroom, yanked down his pants and fucked him, Billy's hands braced on the wall above the toilet, hips rocking greedily, face burning with a combination of being drunk, embarrassed, angry, and turned the fuck on.

Eventually he ran out of things on the bus itself, but that didn't matter, because next he turned to the passing scenery, and there was a story, a memory for each and everything that went by.

It didn't feel like running. When you've had a Joe Dick in your life, there was nowhere to run _to_.

  
*

  
He was deposited at some small coastal town. He lived off the money he had for a few weeks, took up residence at a homeless shelter where they rarely asked questions. He found a job at a packaging plant, working 12-hour shifts four days a week, putting plastic cups and plates into boxes.

It was nothing he'd ever done before. He hated it. He also loved it.

His employers had his real ID, so he went by his real name because no one else cared to know his name. He eventually moved into a cramped apartment in a seedy neighborhood, not bothering to lock his door at night. After his TV was stolen twice, he got a lock, but his TV was stolen again anyways. He didn't bother buying a new one. Instead, he started going out after work to sports bars and watching their TV.

He owned one cup, one plate, a fork, and a spoon. It's funny how little you really need to get by in life.

  
*

  
About a year after Joe died, John showed up at the sports bar nearest to Billy's apartment.

He looked decidedly sober, and he sat with Billy a few minutes in silence before even talking. Billy supposed that of all his past ghosts that could have come back to haunt him, this one wasn't that bad. John'd even made that last night kind of funny with his weird ass body paint and psycho meltdown.

"Pipefitter's in jail," John said quietly, nursing a glass of club soda. Billy just nodded and took a drag of his cigarette. "I'm back on meds and working at a gas station. It's not as glamorous as before, but I get free burritos and hardly anyone comes in at night. I started writing again, even though I suck ass. It's what I do. You played guitar."

Billy shook his head. "I did, that's over."

"Why? Because you can't play without Joe?"

"Fuck no, why do you think I was leaving the fucking band in the first fucking place? I just don't want to play anymore."

John looked at him with that strange, slightly loopy look he always had while he was on the meds. Billy liked it less than the look he had when he was off meds, when he'd look at you like he could see shit you couldn't.

"Well, at least you're going by your real name again. I guess we gotta grow up sometime, or you end up like Pipefitter or Joe." They sat in silence after that, and then Billy took John to see a movie since he came who fucking knows how far just to talk to him, and then John left.

  
*

  
The next day Billy quit his job.

Well, he stopped going, so he guessed that was quitting.

He spent a week locked inside of his apartment, drinking cheap beer, smoking through a couple of cartons of cigarettes, spread out on his tiny bed, legs up on the wall, feet crossed. He and Joe used to spend hours sitting like this in high school, bullshitting and planning their awesome future. Now Billy was trying to plan his own future, but he'd never imagined he'd be planning it alone.

He realized halfway through a six-pack that he'd only loved being here because it meant he could prove Joe wrong. Joe thought Billy would care if he died. All suicide was like that. It was about making a statement, and Joe loved making statements. This one was, loud and clear, "You shitfucker, see how you'll feel after you made me paint the sidewalk with my brain." So Billy came here to start a new life, prove to a dead man that he didn't matter.

Yeah, so _that _was fucked, because once again, Billy'd made his life about Joe. There was no way not to, and Billy thought of John, living the normal life, doped up and just being content, thought of finding more pointless jobs for himself, thought of what he wanted to do, if Joe was still alive somewhere to spite.

At the end of that week, Billy called L.A. and found out that they had a new band he could try out for.

It was about a year overdue.


End file.
